London's new £200m hotel – where the owners want to check out already

London's latest addition to the hotel market opens next month, hoping to attract not only well-heeled guests but well-positioned buyers as it showcases what comes with its £200m asking price.

The W Hotel, in the grimy tourist ghetto of Leicester Square, is a no-expense-spared, 192-bedroom development that is being marketed by Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels on behalf of Northern Irish developers McAleer & Rushe, who bought the former Swiss Centre building for £47m in 2004.

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Luxury hotel chain to introduce 'minibar for the mind'

Luxury hotel chain Morgans Hotel Group is to follow the lead of several cruise lines by introducing a program to ensure that the minds of its guests are as well exercised as their bodies.

Morgans, which owns high profile hotels Sanderson and St Martins Lane in London, New York's Mondrian Soho and the Mondrian Los Angeles, among others, announced January 25 that it would partner with The School of Life, an organization that runs programs and services aimed at increasing personal fulfillment.

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Guest claims drunk Marriott employee sexually assaulted sleeping guest

A woman claiming she was sexually assaulted by an intoxicated northwest suburban hotel employee who used a master key to enter her room while she slept filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the hotel.

Katherine Olson claims Marriott hotel employee Mauricio Rodriguez used a universal hotel card to break into her room and sexually assault her April 23, 2010, at the Marriot Schaumburg at 50 N. Martingale Rd. in Schaumburg, according to a suit filed in Cook County Circuit Court.

The suit claims Olson was a guest at the hotel when employee Rodriguez became intoxicated and used a hotel master key to enter her room without her permission while she slept late April 22 or early April 23.

Once inside the room, Rodriguez removed his clothing and sexually assaulted Olson, according to the suit.

The two-count suit claims Marriott International Inc. failed to provide adequate security, allowed employees with access to master keys to become intoxicated, served employees excess amounts of alcohol and allowed employees access to master keys after their shifts.

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Morgans to sell two NYC hotels

Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels is handling the sale of the Royalton and Morgans hotels for the company, which as of November 30 had liabilities of $801.2 million. Its market cap is $282.2 million, according to Reuters data.

Bids for the two hotels are due next week, said sources familiar with the matter.

Morgans could not be reached immediately for comment.

Jones Lang La Salle Hotels declined to comment.

The two hotels offer a buyer high-end assets in the most coveted urban locations, which are enjoying a surge in demand as business travel recovers.

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Ownership of Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund V Resorts at Stake

Investors jockeying to control the fate of eight huge U.S. resorts are pushing to get the Feb. 1 due date of $1.5 billion of debt on those properties extended.

At stake is ownership of the CNL Hotels & Resorts Inc. portfolio, including Hawaii's 780-room Grand Wailea resort and the 739-room Arizona Biltmore resort in Phoenix.

The CNL resorts are owned by Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund V, which financed its 2007 purchase of the portfolio by saddling the properties with $3.3 billion of debt. The restructuring of that debt will likely be one of the largest in the commercial-real-estate market this year.

The latest twist in the CNL saga came earlier this month, when investors led by Paulson & Co. and Winthrop Realty Trust reached an agreement with the Morgan Stanley fund to take control of CNL, exchanging their $600 million of CNL's corporate mezzanine debt for the company's equity, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter.

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Darden to test Red Lobster & Olive Garden under one roof

Palm Coast will be the testing ground for a new Darden Restaurants Inc. concept of housing two of its restaurant brands in the same building, a company representative said.

The 8,700-square-foot building in the Palm Coast Town Center off State Road 100 will house both Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurants. The restaurants, which will employ a total of 215, are both expected to start hiring Feb. 9 and are scheduled to open March 7.

Darden spokesman Rich Jeffers said the company created the “synergy restaurant” concept to expand into smaller markets that would not meet its population density requirements to build a single brand. Jeffers declined to say what that population density threshold is, but Palm Coast, about an hour south of Jacksonville, had a population of 73,168 in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Taco Bell responds to lawsuit

Image via Wikipedia(Hospitality Business News) January 26, 2010 --- "At Taco Bell, we buy our beef from the same trusted brands you find in the supermarket, like Tyson Foods. We start with 100 percent USDA-inspected beef. Then we simmer it in our proprietary blend of seasonings and spices to give our seasoned beef its signature Taco Bell taste and texture. We are proud of the quality of our beef and identify all the seasoning and spice ingredients on our website. Unfortunately, the lawyers in this case elected to sue first and ask questions later -- and got their "facts" absolutely wrong. We plan to take legal action for the false statements being made about our food."

Getting Into Harvard Easier Than McDonald's University in China

Zhou Xiaobu runs from one end of a table to another, grasping a piece of a puzzle she and her team are assembling as part of a leadership training exercise for McDonald’s Corp. managers.

“Go, go, go,” yells their Taiwanese teacher, exhorting them to work for the prize, a box of Danish butter cookies, for being the first to build the company’s trademark Golden Arches. Above their heads is a sign that reads: “Learning today, leading tomorrow.” The thick green binders stuffed with paperwork on each of the 31 students’ desks indicate the next activity may not be as rousing.

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Starbucks Sees Second-Quarter Profit Below Estimates on Higher Coffee Cost

Starbucks Corp., the world’s biggest coffee-shop operator, forecast second-quarter profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates as it projected paying more for coffee.

Net income will be as much as 33 cents a share, the Seattle-based company said today in a statement. Analysts expect 35 cents, the average of 18 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

“We are seeing coffee cost increases alone which are penalizing our profit and loss in 2011 by about 20 cents per share,” Chief Financial Officer Troy Alstead said in a telephone interview.

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Stanley Ho Says He Transferred Macau Casino Stake

Billionaire Stanley Ho today said he transferred ownership of his stake in Asia’s biggest casino company to family members, seeking to end a dispute for control over a business he spent five decades building.
The tycoon had earlier said the transfer of a 31.7 percent stake in Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau SA to five of his children and the woman he refers to as his third wife was done without his consent. The stake in STDM may be worth at least $1.63 billion using today’s stock price of unit SJM Holdings Ltd.
“The big problem has been resolved,” Ho, 89, said in an interview broadcast today by Television Broadcasts Ltd. “My families and I are very happy we have made the decision.”

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Barclay Brothers Said to Gain Control of Maybourne Hotels’ Owner

David and Frederick Barclay will gain control of the parent company of Maybourne Hotels Ltd., owner of London luxury hotels including Claridge’s, a person familiar with the plan said.

The brothers, owners of the Telegraph Media Group Ltd., will buy 35 percent of Coroin Ltd. from Irish property entrepreneur Derek Quinlan to add to the 25 percent holding they purchased last week, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. London-based Maybourne also owns the Berkeley and Connaught hotels.

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New Chinese Name For Holiday Inn Express Hotels

Image via Wikipedia(Hospitality Business News) InterContinental Hotels Group recently announced that Holiday Inn Express, its mid-scale hotel brand, has changed its Chinese name to Zhi Xuan Jia Ri in Greater China.

Commenting on the new name Keith Barr, the managing director of IHG Greater China, stated that the Chinese name change better reflects the needs of their guests who look for fresh, clean and uncomplicated hotels offering comfort, convenience, and good value. He added that they firmly believe this name change can also better represent the brand equity of Holiday Inn Express and IHG is committed to using a variety of our resources to communicate with their key stakeholders.

The group says that Zhi Xuan Jia Ri ( 智选假日 ), which is translated as 'Smart Choice' in English, is in line with the brand essence and values of Holiday Inn Express.

Based on the results of a large scale consumer survey, IHG conducted prior to initiating this name change program: it was decided that the new Chinese name provides a much clearer interpretation of the brand essence and positioning among Chinese guests. According to Barr, since they started changing the Chinese name and signage in November 2010 the brand has seen have seen a positive increase in the hotel business. He added that they were very confident that this name change would also be fully supported by the hotels' owners during the process of changing the hotels' Chinese names.

Holiday Inn Express is expanding quickly into China’s first and second tier cities, with 29 hotels up and running and around 30 more in the development pipeline.

Texas company sues Las Vegas Sands over rights to ‘Palazzo’ name

Another trademark infringement lawsuit has been filed in a dispute between the Palazzo resort on the Las Vegas Strip and a Texas clothing company.

The Palazzo hotel-casino, owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp., in 2009 sued Palazzo Design Corp. of Houston, charging the Houston company was threatening litigation over the Las Vegas Palazzo's sale of T-shirts and clothing items bearing the hotel's name.

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Trump Says He and Union Have a Deal on Tavern on the Green

Donald J. Trump and the head of the powerful union that represented the 400 workers at Tavern on the Green say they have come to an agreement that could revive the shuttered landmark restaurant that is now home to a food-truck court and a visitor center.

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